La Mexicana

> Arturo
> Proyectos

Superblocks to the rescue: Barcelona’s plan to give streets back to residents. In the latest attempt from a big city to move away from car hegemony, Barcelona has ambitious plans.

Currently faced with excessive pollution and noise levels, the city has come up with a new mobility plan to reduce traffic by 21%. And it comes with something extra: freeing up nearly 60% of streets currently used by cars to turn them into so-called “citizen spaces”. The plan is based around the idea of superilles (superblocks) – mini neighbourhoods around which traffic will flow, and in which spaces will be repurposed to “fill our city with life”, as its tagline says.

This plan will start in the famous gridded neighbourhood of Eixample. That revolutionary design, engineered by Ildefons Cerdà in the late 19th century, had at its core the idea that the city should breathe and – for both ideological and public health reasons – planned for the population to be spread out equally, as well as providing green spaces within each block.
El primer bosque de comida está por abrir en Seattle. ¿Cómo?

For more than a year, anyone with a smartphone has been able to hail a city-run van that will pick up passengers at the public bus stop of their choice and drop them off across town. Ajelo, a local tech startup, has developed the dispatch system, and the city manages the vehicles. That means Ajelo hasn’t had to deal with the objections from local officials that Uber often faces, but the government’s cooperation has brought its own frustrations. Although ridesharing is nothing new, Helsinki’s system, called Kutsuplus—Finnish for “call plus”—stands out for the scope of its ambition. Its fleet of vans roams the city while an algorithm fields calls that come in through an app. Once the passenger makes a choice, the chosen van is given a new route to accommodate him. Rissanen’s optimism aside, there do seem to be a number of obstacles.
New Helsinki Bus Line Lets You Choose Your Own Route.

An on-demand minibus service run by Helsinki’s public transit authority lets riders choose their own route and summon a trip with a smartphone.

Called Kutsuplus (Finnish for “call plus,” referring to the on-call nature of the service) the system of on-demand minibuses lets riders decide on a start and end point, and choose whether to share a journey or take a private trip. Called demand-responsive public transit, it’s designed for maximum flexibility. Riding Kutsuplus costs more than bus fare, but less than an expensive Helsinki taxi. At current exchange rates, it’s a $4.75 fee plus 60 cents per kilometer — less than half the cost of cab fare. Those costs vary based on how many people are riding. Scheduling is completely computer automated — just summon a Kutsuplus minibus to a bus stop with your smartphone and select a destination. Despite its on-demand nature, Kutsuplus isn’t designed to put cabs out of business.
Carfree Cities. Fastcoexist. After over a hundred years of living with cars, some cities are slowly starting to realize that the automobile doesn't make a lot of sense in the urban context.

It isn't just the smog or the traffic deaths; in a city, cars aren't even a convenient way to get around. Traffic in London today moves slower than an average cyclist (or a horse-drawn carriage). Commuters in L.A. spend 90 hours a year stuck in traffic. A U.K. study found that drivers spend 106 days of their lives looking for parking spots. Now a growing number of cities are getting rid of cars in certain neighborhoods through fines, better design, new apps, and, in the case of Milan, even paying commuters to leave their car parked at home and take the train instead.

Unsurprisingly, the changes are happening fastest in European capitals that were designed hundreds or thousands of years before cars were ever built. Here are a handful of the leaders moving toward car-free neighborhoods.
Asociación de Colonos ZEDEC Santa Fe AC – sociación de Colonos ZEDEC Santa Fe AC. No a 6 mil viviendas en el predio La Mexicana en Santa Fe, @GobCDMX @ManceraMiguelMX.